


Brothers by Choice

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 13:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: First following Naomi's life, then Blair's





	Brothers by Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 sentinel bingo prompt 'chosen family'

H2 4

Prompt:  chosen family

Word count:  4600

Brothers by Choice

by Bluewolf

When they married, Jacob and Betty Sandburg were devoted to each other. For three years they only had each other. And then, after three childless years, Betty had been ecstatic when she realized she was pregnant. She had so wanted to have Jacob's child!

Jacob's reaction to the news was somewhat less than enthusiastic, although he tried to show Betty that he was pleased. And he was even less enthusiastic when a scan revealed that she was carrying twins.

Because he realized right from the start that once the child(ren) arrived only part of her attention would be on him. Even before they were born he was jealous of them, of the attention Betty would have to give to them.

When David and Naomi were first born, Jacob pretty well ignored them, and when Betty called him on it, simply said he didn't think there was much a man could do to help with babies that young. He disguised his reluctance over learning how to change their diapers, conceding that it was something he could do to help Betty, but he was far from happy about doing it. Quite simply, he resented his children - Betty was his!

As they passed infancy and reached toddlerhood, Jacob became more and more intolerant of their needs. It could almost be said that he began to bully them. Betty couldn't understand it; for their sake she didn't try to intervene, realizing that any time she did, Jacob demanded more and more of them, young though they were.

At least his bullying was verbal rather than physical.

More than once Betty wondered if her best option would be to leave, taking the children - but despite his treatment of them, she loved him too much to think seriously of leaving him... although she knew that if Jacob ever did start hitting either of them, she _would_ leave with them, even though it broke her heart.

The children were devoted to each other, and not long after they entered their teens - at a time when they knew their father was nowhere near - discussed what they could do once they were old enough to leave home.

Naomi - having seen how unhappy their mother was - was determined that she would never marry, never settle with any man. Indeed, she was determined that she would never settle anywhere. Their paternal grandparents, now dead, had been rich, and left them both a considerable amount of money, put into trust so that only they could access it, though not until they were eighteen. Naomi wanted to leave school at sixteen and move away from their New York home, and was prepared to do any kind of menial work, as long as it gave her enough of a wage to exist on, until she could claim her trust fund. David was less willing to leave school before he was eighteen, but he, too, wanted to leave New York and their father's home as soon as was practicable. He wasn't sure that he would have the option to do so, however, before he was eighteen; if he had to work to support himself, how could he possibly continue at school?

But if Naomi left, sneaking away (as she would almost have to do) how would their father behave towards him?

Well, there was time for him to decide; little though she liked it, Naomi realized she couldn't realistically leave until she was sixteen. Nobody would employ someone in their very early teens unless possibly as a prostitute, and she had the sense to know that even if she chose that option it wouldn't be long before she found herself 'employed' by a pimp who would take most of what she earned. At sixteen, though, she could look for work in - say - a shop.

***

The next two years passed almost without incident; Naomi and David gritted their teeth and tried to obey all their father's rules, though sometimes he threw in a new one without warning, almost as if he needed something to criticize them for.

 _Not much longer,_ Naomi thought. Another four months and she'd be sixteen...

And then Betty died in an accident. She was crossing the road on a green light and a driver ran the red light and hit her.

Jacob was shattered.

And then, one night about a month after the accident, he went into Naomi's room after she had gone to bed... and raped her, saying it was her responsibility now to satisfy his needs.

He could have thought she was too cowed by his treatment of her over the previous fourteen years to object. Certainly, at the time, she didn't, afraid that he might hit her if she did, even although his bullying had always been verbal. But the next morning she packed a few clothes and what money she had saved from the not-very-generous allowance he reluctantly gave his children, slipped into his study while he was showering, found her birth certificate and added that to her bag, told David why she was leaving then, rather than in three more months, and walked out as if she was going to school.

Just as she reached the door, David muttered, "Wait for me at the corner," slipped into the study and collected his birth certificate, went back to his room and pushed a few clothes and the money he had saved into a bag, then he also left, and joined Naomi.

Instead of going to school, they headed for the bus station and boarded a long distance bus heading for Philadelphia. There, they changed buses and went to Baltimore. At Baltimore, they changed direction and took a train for Pittsburgh.

From there they went to Chicago, where they changed direction again and headed for Fort Worth.

During the journey they had discussed their options, and they decided to stay in Fort Worth for a while. Using the surname Beech, they found work in the stockroom of a local supermarket - both looked older than their actual age because of the stress under which they had always lived, so the manager assumed that they were indeed the seventeen and eighteen they claimed to be - having decided that if their father had gone to the police to declare them missing, it would be fifteen, or maybe sixteen-year-old twins the police would be looking for.

David enrolled for evening classes as well, but Naomi - although she had liked school well enough - decided that she didn't want to continue with her education.

And then, three weeks later, Naomi realized that she was pregnant.

She considered the implications of that for two or three days, then went to see a doctor and ask for an abortion... and discovered that despite the circumstances, the doctor flatly refused to consider abortion as an option.

When she told David, he was furious, and suggested trying to find an illegal clinic. However, Naomi had had time to consider the situation, and decided that once the child was born, she could give it for adoption, saying only that she had been raped. And on consideration, David decided that that was probably the best option. An illegal abortion could kill her.

***

The headline in the national newspaper jumped out at them as they made their way to work some two months later.

**NEW YORK BUSINESSMAN KILLS HIMSELF**

And then in smaller letters, but still large enough for them to read even at a distance of some three yards -

**JACOB SANDBURG, A PROMINENT NEW YORK BUSINESSMAN, COMMITTED SUICIDE LAST NIGHT BY JUMPING FROM A WINDOW OF HIS OFFICE**

They looked at each other, then David walked over and bought a copy of the paper.

He folded it and pushed it into his pocket. They wouldn't have much chance to read the report until they got home again that evening - well, David might, at lunch time; his work involved shifting stock, taking items out to the store and shelving newly arrived goods - but Naomi worked in the office of the stockroom, and her lunch hour was different. Indeed, a lot of the time she ate at her desk and didn't take a proper break; most of her fellow workers did the same. It was the only way they could keep up with their work. Even the store manager admitted that they really needed at least two more office staff, but Head Office refused to consider it; and Naomi had the strong suspicion that taking time off to have her baby could very well mean losing her job. Even if she handed the child over to Social Services right away, she would still need to have a few days off...

***

That evening, she and David took time to read the report. It spoke of Jacob's grief over the death of his wife four months earlier; mentioned that for some reason unknown his children had left home three or four weeks later and disappeared; reported that his secretary had been worried about him because of it and her lack of surprise that he had killed himself. And her concern about the business. She could keep it going indefinitely - but he had left no will, his heirs had to be his children, and where were they? Why had they disappeared?

After they finished reading, David and Naomi looked at each other.

"I refuse to feel guilty about it," Naomi said quietly.

"I don't blame you," David replied. "He was never really a father to us, though I don't know why he seemed not to like us."

"I've been thinking about that," Naomi said. "I think... just by being there, we were competing with him for Mom's attention. I think that raping me was, in a way, revenge for taking Mom's attention away from him. Basically, he should have made sure he didn't have any children."

"Maybe he didn't realize the problem until after we were born," David suggested.

"It's possible. But it makes me wonder - was he totally sane?"

David looked at her in silence for a moment before saying, "At least we had - and have - each other. And even if you decide you want to travel, once you get the money our grandfather left us - yes, I know you want to travel - you'll always have a home with me." 

***

Having discussed the matter a little longer, they decided that their best option would be to phone their father's secretary, and at lunchtime next day David made the call.

Morna Cunningham was at first suspicious -

"How do I know you really are Mr. Sandburg's son? For all I know you read the report in the paper and this call is just a scam!"

"My name wasn't in the report, nor was my sister's. It didn't even give our sexes or say that we were twins. But I imagine you know our names - I'm David; and when we left, both Naomi and I took our birth certificates with us, so we can prove who we are." He took a deep breath. "If you can put me in touch with my father's lawyer, I'll sign whatever is necessary to let you deal with the business. We're not even asking for an income from it. But Naomi and I both realize that unless we do something - even authorizing the lawyer to sell the business as a going concern and giving the money to charity - a lot of people are in danger of losing their jobs, and we don't want that on our consciences."

And so she put him in touch with the lawyer.

Andrew Mortimer advised David to get himself a lawyer, which he did, then showed his birth certificate to Norman Green to prove his identity (he was able to get a day off work by agreeing to cover the time off with overtime). He also explained to Green why he and Naomi had chosen to disappear.

Between them, Green and Mortimer came to an agreement, the business was sold surprisingly quickly as a going concern with all employees guaranteed continued employment, and David and Naomi found themselves in possession of a fairly substantial settlement as a result. They promptly gave up their work and David returned to full-time education. And they reverted to using their proper name.

By then Naomi was close to giving birth.

She was still trying to decide what was her best option. Little though she wanted to keep the child conceived through incest and rape, it was still her child... If she had been able to get an abortion when she first realized she was pregnant the situation would never have arisen - but over the nine months of her pregnancy, especially since she had first become aware of the child moving inside her... somehow she had begun to think of it as her child...

 _Her_ child... and nothing to do with her unmourned father.

And when the newly-born child was put into her arms, she knew she was going to keep him... and that he would never know the truth behind his conception.

Without being quite sure where the name came from, she called him Blair.

David didn't totally agree with her decision, though he wasn't really surprised by it.

***

Naomi realized that, much though she wanted to travel, it wasn't feasible with a very young child, and she acted as David's housekeeper for two years. During those years she took lessons in self-defense, thinking that a woman traveling on her own, accompanied only by a young child, could be considered an easy target by anyone less than totally law-abiding. Then, feeling that two-year-old Blair was old enough to enjoy traveling, she made an experimental month-long trip around America.

Blair adapted readily to the traveling, and although she went home again for a short while, it wasn't long before she decided to head off again, this time going abroad. She spent a week in Hawaii (partly because she had always wanted to see the place, partly to break the long trans-Pacific journey) before heading on to Australia. And then on to Singapore. And then on to India, to Addis Ababa, to Nairobi, to Capetown, to Lagos, to Khartoum, to Cairo...

It was some five years before she returned to Fort Worth. And during that time, she claimed to be a widow.

She had written to David regularly during those years, giving him an address every time she had chosen to stay somewhere for more than a few days, so she knew that after he finished University and got a job in the head office of a major manufacturing firm, he had moved from the apartment they had shared to a slightly more upmarket house.

Naomi decided to stay in Fort Worth for a few months to give David a chance to get to know Blair.

Uncle and nephew bonded so well that when Naomi decided it was time to move on, thinking of New Zealand (which she had initially bypassed) as a destination, David offered to give Blair a home so that he could get some unbroken education.

Naomi thought about that for a minute. Although she hadn't disliked her days in school, she hadn't enjoyed them either - not the way David had. But in the last couple of years, she had begun to see in Blair a hunger for learning that she recognized from David's teenage years. "Okay," she said. "If Blair wants to stay and go to school, I won't say no."

And so Blair remained in Fort Worth with his uncle, and went to school - doing so well that he was advanced a class three times, halfway through the school year, and sat his final exams just after his sixteenth birthday, passing with the second highest marks in his class.

"What do you want to do now?" David asked, the evening Blair went home flourishing his report card.

Blair frowned slightly. "I know Mom wants me to join her again," he said, "and in a way I feel I should - she's been so good about letting me stay here this past eight years."

"I know, Blair," David said. "But what do _you_ want to do?"

"I'd like to go to university," Blair said. "Though... "

"Though?" David encouraged.

"I've been looking at universities, and the best one I can find for anthropology, which is what I want to study, is Rainier. And that's in Washington State - in Cascade."

"I know you're only sixteen," David said, "and that's young to be on your own, away from home. But we can arrange for you to stay in university accommodation until you're eighteen. And you'll always have a home here if you need one." He looked thoughtfully at Blair. "Your Mom has the money to pay all your university expenses; but if she won't, to try to force you into traveling with her, I'll pay them. No - " as Blair opened his mouth - "I know I'm just your uncle, but I've been a sort of surrogate father to you these past years, and I'm just doing what any father would."

Blair looked at him. "What can I say but 'thank you'?" he murmured. Then - "Uncle David - Mom would never tell me - do you know who my real father is?"

David hesitated a moment too long.

"You do know," Blair said. "Please - tell me. And... why won't Mom say anything about him?"

 _Half a truth,_ David thought. "She didn't want you to know, and please, don't let her know I've told you. She was raped. That's as much as I can say. We were living in New York at the time, and - well - it made her doubtful about staying there in case it happened again. There are a lot of rough men live there. So she and I moved to here."

"What about grandparents?"

"They're both dead," David said. "Your grandmother was killed in a road accident sixteen years ago, and your grandfather fell out of his office window a few months later. It was before you were born. But your Mom and I inherited a fair amount of money from them... and our grandparents left us money too. She doesn't waste her money, but that's why your Mom has been able to travel the way she's been doing... and probably will for a long time."

David then discussed the matter with Naomi - it was a very long phone call - and she agreed that her brother, who had an extremely well-paid job, could pay Blair's university expenses while she gave him a reasonable allowance.

So Blair enrolled at Rainier, young though he was, went to Cascade, and proceeded to make a success of his academic career. He spent his vacations in Fort Worth - Uncle David timed his marriage for Blair's first summer vacation, giving Blair an aunt and, through her, two more uncles and several 'cousins'.

Blair liked his new-found family through marriage, and his two new uncles gave him holiday jobs that taught him skills that were to prove useful to him - the long-distance driver of big rigs in particular; Blair had learned quite early in his university life that if there was only one place available on an expedition, the man who could drive a heavy vehicle was more likely to get it than the man who could only drive a car. A lot of expeditions needed a big truck to get their equipment to a place from where they would walk.

Those jobs also lent him a necessary cover-up obfuscation at Rainier, because saying he had them and being able to talk about them helped to disguise the fact that he didn't actually need them. Two or three of his fellow students came from rich families and made no secret of the fact - and while they did have some hangers-on, few of the other students liked them. Blair had no intention of being classed by most of the other students as a 'rich brat'.

He was careful to say that although he was getting verbal instruction on the handling of a big rig, his actual job involved keeping track of what they were carrying, what was being delivered where - which was true. Uncle Tom was taking something of a chance by giving him actual driving experience on a heavy vehicle when he was still in his teens, but it was always on deserted back roads where he was unlikely to meet another big vehicle.

Blair was able to save all of his allowance from Naomi, which was paid direct into the bank; although he was friendly enough with most of his fellow students, he was too young to go out socializing with them, and his unhesitating acceptance of that also helped them to accept him. What he spent was the money he earned from his holiday jobs. He had tried telling both of his uncles that it was enough for them to teach him the skills, they didn't have to pay him, but both insisted. "An apprentice is paid," Uncle Peter told him, "and you're doing an apprentice's work while you're here."

***

After he got his Masters, Blair decided to take a full year out. Much though he loved learning, he wanted a break. Uncle Tom would be happy to give him a job (in any case he preferred driving to the welding he had learned from Uncle Peter, though he knew he could get a job with Uncle Peter too). But at the same time...

After thinking about it for some time, he went in search of a recruiting center, and signed up for three years in the air force.

He ended up flying helicopters; flying Apaches in Desert Storm.

Unfortunately, on a mission in November of 1990 anti-aircraft fire hit his helicopter. With a bad leg injury, he still managed to get back to his base and land, but the prognosis wasn't good and he was invalided out of the air force and returned to civilian life.

He had given Uncle David as his next of kin, if only because he had a fixed address (unlike Naomi) and ended up back in Fort Worth. What surprised him was that Naomi gave up her travels for some months, staying with David, making the primary focus of her visit caring for her son.

It took several months, but Blair eventually made an almost full recovery, and Naomi disappeared again, en route to... wherever the wind blew her. Blair was left with a slight limp, but when the next university year started he went back to Rainier and in Cascade found a physical therapist with whom he worked for nearly two years, by which time his leg - despite the pessimistic prognosis of the air force surgeon - was almost back to normal. When he was really tired he still limped lightly, and - despite maintaining the exercises he had done with the therapist - he guessed he always would. The surgeon hadn't been entirely wrong, he'd just been rather more pessimistic than he'd needed to be.

During those two years he began thinking about a PhD, even as he started working at Rainier as a TA.

Blair wanted to base his PhD dissertation on sentinels - one of his purchases from his early days in Rainier, initially bought because he thought it would help him understand some of the changes in anthropological perception over the years, had been Burton's Sentinels of Paraguay. It did give him something of the understanding he'd hoped for... but the idea of people with heightened senses was one he found enthralling.

However, it took him three years to find a sentinel and begin working with him.

***

Blair was never sure - and he didn't ask, because although he was in no way ashamed of his months flying helicopters he didn't want to sound as if he was boasting about it - whether Jim believed it when he told Kincaid's pilot that he had flown in Desert Storm. Certainly Jim had been outside the helicopter at the time, hanging beneath it with Kincaid hanging onto him, but that was no guarantee that he hadn't heard Blair's words. But compared to Jim's years in the army, Blair's few months of service, before he was invalided out, were negligible. He preferred to believe that Jim thought his words to Walters were one of his obfuscations.

And then his warehouse 'home' was destroyed when a drug lab in the other half of the building blew up. He had nearly finished his study of TV violence on primates, and had begun to look for a proper (small, one or two room) apartment he could move to after he returned Larry to the biology department, but even if he had found one, he knew he couldn't move into it until the study was actually finished. Though he had some doubt about whether the final part of the study would be valid, because of Larry's exposure to the explosion that provided him with real-life violence.

With his back rather against the wall, he begged Jim for a few days' accommodation; Jim was, as he had rather expected, somewhat reluctant, but he had already learned that Jim - despite his hard as nails outward appearance - was really very soft-hearted.

After Larry had trashed the place twice, Blair decided that enough was enough, and returned Larry to the biology department. Then he read through his notes, and cobbled together a short paper finishing with Larry's final behavior after the explosion, expressing a guess that the explosion, coming after the TV the little primate had watched, had been the final straw; and that by extrapolation he would expect young humans to behave in a similar way if they were exposed to too much TV and film violence, by turning to vandalism.

(He was far from satisfied with the paper, but he handed it in to the professor for whom he was the TA; and with it approved (which surprised him a little because he and Professor Buckner didn't totally see eye to eye) he submitted it to an anthropology magazine. It was accepted, which was a positive result and earned him a few dollars he could mention to his fellow TAs - a TA's 'salary' being less than princely.

Blair then told Buckner that he had found a subject for his PhD - the work of the police as protectors of their 'tribes' - and was excused from doing any further papers, although because he was still living in Cascade he would have to continue his work as a TA. However, that didn't take up so much of his time - except at exam times - that he wouldn't be able to spend a lot of time working with Jim.)

On the fifth day of the week after which he had promised Jim he would get 'out of his hair', Jim told Blair that he was welcome to stay as long as he wanted.

After that, they lived and worked together - and although Blair often phoned Fort Worth and the uncle he regarded as a father, Blair found himself thinking of Jim as the brother he had never had.

He loved Jim; and he knew Jim loved him in a way he hadn't loved his blood brother Steven since they were young children. And although, with Blair's encouragement Jim had become reconciled with his father and brother, although Blair did love his own family...

Although Blair got on well with both William and Steven Ellison; and although, when he took Jim to visit Uncle David, Jim got on well with Blair's Fort Worth relatives (he already knew Naomi)...

As far as both men were concerned, they had become brothers, not by blood but by choice. And they knew that nothing would ever separate them.


End file.
